Motorsport Sponsorship

Sports sponsorship is a longstanding and effective form of indirect advertising for the tobacco industry, particularly in terms of increasing the uptake of smoking among young people.[1][2] Motorsports are particularly appealing because of their association with adventure, excitement, glamour and risk.[3][4][5]

Background

In the 1970s and 1980s tobacco advertising in motorsports involved widespread direct branding, with cigarette logos on cars, motorbikes, team uniforms and trackside advertising, largely to gain brand exposure via TV coverage.[2][6][7]
When restrictions on this type of advertising were introduced in some countries in the 1990s and early 2000s, tobacco companies began to use more creative methods to get around the rules,[3] such as British American Tobacco’s (BAT) ‘dark market’ logos (see below).[2]

After the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), banned “all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship” in 2005,[8] and with the increasingly global nature of TV coverage and consequent bans on cross-border advertising, companies were forced to remove all cigarette branding. However, sponsorship of motorsports continued, maintaining opportunities for indirect advertising and cross-promotion throughout the 2000s.[3][2] In 2018 an estimated 352 million people watched F1 races globally.[9]

From 2018, some tobacco companies adopted a new approach to motorsports’ sponsorship, with Philip Morris International (PMI) and BAT using corporate mission statements and associated branding to link their ‘potentially reduced risk’ products to Formula One (F1) and Grand Prix motorcycle (MotoGP) racing teams. Public relations statements from the tobacco companies focus on corporate social responsibility, and technological collaboration and innovation, rather than product brands.

In March 2019, the WHO issued a statement urging governments to enforce existing bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, particularly in motorsports.[10][11]

Formula One

In early 2019 there were several high profile launches of F1 cars branded with tobacco company slogans, reflecting new, and renewed, sponsorship deals. International TV coverage of F1 events, and criticism from public health advocates, shone a light on the industry’s new approach. This led to investigations by Australian and European Union (EU) authorities for potential breaches of tobacco advertising regulations.[12][13]

Screengrab of main page Mission Winnow website, accessed November 2018

The tobacco industry has had a long and close association with F1 motor racing. In the 1970s and 1980s several companies advertised their cigarette brands with full branding and product logos on F1 cars and drivers’ uniforms, including PMI advertising Marlboro on red Ferraris, and Imperial Tobacco with John Player Special.[14][2]

In the mid-1980s, Barrie Gill, then CEO of Championship Sports Specialists Ltd., a sports sponsorship company, explained why F1 was such a good fit for the tobacco industry:
“It’s the ideal sport for sponsorship. It’s got glamour and worldwide television coverage. It’s a 10 - month activity involving 16 races in 14 countries with drivers from 16 nationalities. After football it's the Number One multinational sport. It’s got total global exposure, total global hospitality, total media coverage and 600 million people watching it on TV every fortnight … It’s macho, it’s excitement, it’s colour, it’s international, it’s glamour … They’re there to get visibility. They’re there to sell cigarettes.”[7]

In the 1990s, with the introduction of tobacco advertising restrictions in key countries where races were to be held, and televised globally, companies became more creative to get around the rules. BAT, for example, began “designing ‘global dark market logos’” which used the colour and design of key cigarettes brands but not their names.[2] Concerned that prestigious and lucrative F1 races would be moved to countries with fewer advertising restrictions in place, some governments, including the UK, granted advertising ban exemptions.[3][15][16]

In 2001, with the WHO FCTC being negotiated, the International Automobile Federation (FIA, Federation Internationale de L’Automobile),[17] F1’s governing body, voted to ban tobacco advertising in the sport.[18][19] After withdrawing their decision in 2003,[20] the FIA ban was finally implemented at the end of 2006 and tobacco branding became largely absent from F1. In 2010, Ferrari, at the time the only F1 team still sponsored by a tobacco company, was forced to remove all of their remaining ‘barcode’ logos after being accused of using subliminal advertising for Marlboro cigarettes.[2][21] However Philip Morris’ sponsorship of the sport continued. [2]

Tobacco Sponsorship of F1 Criticised and Investigated

In February 2019, the European Union’s Health, Food Safety and Energy Union department started investigating sponsorship deals between tobacco companies and F1 teams, and the use of new corporate statements on cars and uniforms.[22][23] Eight out of the 21 Grand Prix races were scheduled to be held in European countries that year.[24]

When issuing its statement one month later, just before the Australian Grand Prix, the WHO pointed out that the FCTC Article 13 ban covers “activities with the effect or likely effect of promoting a tobacco product or tobacco use either directly or indirectly”. They criticised BAT for previously stating that their partnership with McLaren would give them a “global platform to drive greater resonance of certain products, including glo, a heated tobacco product”.[10] The WHO said this indicated that “the company’s intent is to promote tobacco use”.[10] They also noted that PMI had registered the ‘Mission Winnow’ logo as a trademark “including for use with respect to tobacco products”.[10] They emphasised that the ban included “hosting or receiving broadcasts of Formula 1 and MotoGP events” with “preventative action” potentially including preventing the screening of events.[10]

The President of the FIA, the governing body of F1, backed the WHO’s position saying that the two organisations were “aligned very closely” in relation to tobacco advertising.[25]
This followed an earlier statement that, since 2006, the FIA had “strongly opposed the presence of any advertising or sponsorship for cigarettes or tobacco products in connection with its championships and nothing has changed to that approach.”[26]. However they did not agree to reconsider sponsorship of teams by tobacco companies.[27]

In May 2019, it was announced that neither PMI's 'Mission Winnow' nor BAT's 'A Better Tomorrow' branding (see below) would appear in the sport's official console game, F1 2019. The game's director, Lee Mather, said:

“We always go ‘non-tobacco'. Even some of them that are quite marginal, there are often reasons why we can’t. We always have to err on the side of caution. The last thing we want is try and sell in a territory where something is questionable.”[28]

Philip Morris and Ferrari

Ferrari is the most valuable F1 team in the world, worth US$1.3 billion in 2017,[29] and the most successful in terms of race wins.[30] PMI has had a long relationship with Ferrari that started in 1984,[31] and the tobacco company's cigarette brand Marlboro has been Ferrari’s title sponsor since 1997,[2][32][33] after switching from McLaren in 1996.[14][34]

Senior PMI board members have been on the board of Ferrari, and vice versa. For example, in July 2018, PMI non-executive Chairman Louis C. Camilleri was appointed Ferrari’s Chief Executive Officer, following the death of Ferrari’s chairman Sergio Marchionne.[35] Marchionne had been a member of the PMI Board until his death.[36][37]
Ferrari was headed by former Philip Morris marketing executive Maurizio Arrivabene until January 2019.[38]

In September 2017, Philip Morris renewed its partnership with Ferrari,[32][33] a sponsorship deal which Sports Pro Magazine had previously estimated cost the tobacco company in the region of US$160 million a year.[32]

In 2018, Ferrari and PMI announced their new promotional campaign called ‘Mission Winnow’.[39] PMI’s CEO André Calantzopoulos announced that “Through Mission Winnow we want to let the world know how we have changed, to share our pride in the transformation that people of PMI have achieved as well as our dedication to rigorous science and innovation that can lead to a better future”,[40] indicating that this campaign was more about presenting an image of corporate social responsibility than sport.

The Mission Winnow logo had first appeared on Scuderia Ferrari’s cars and drivers’ uniforms at the Japanese Grand Prix in October 2018 when it was criticized as a form of marketing for Marlboro, due to the similarity of the design in shape and colour,[41] leading to an investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).[12] After separate investigations by the Australian Department of Health and the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services,[13] in March 2019 the Mission Winnow branding was dropped from Ferrari’s official team name and cars ahead of the first event of the year, the Australian Grand Prix.[42] According to Ferrari Chief Executive, and PMI chairman, Louis C. Camilleri “There were problems with the Department of Health and Philip Morris did not have time to find a solution".[43] He went on to say that "Winnow is not a brand, however. It has nothing to do with tobacco but is about the transition from cigarettes to electronic (products)”.

Camilleri’s statement was echoed by PMI’s Director of Global Communication, Tommaso di Giovanni, who claimed that “Mission Winnow is a window to the new Philip Morris International and our partners, to our commitment and the stimuli that drive us to improve and evolve. And to contribute to the progress of society”.[44]. The Mission Winnow branding was back on the car and drivers’ clothing at the Azerbaijan race at the end of April.

Other promotional CSR activity by PMI has helped to raise the profile of the 'Mission Winnow' initiative. For example it published a book called Winnow Your Words: Kimi's Book of Haiku, written by Ferrari team member Kimi Raikkonen[45] (who at the time had over 1.3 million followers on Instagram). It was presented at the Japanese Grand Prix in October 2018, and subsequently sold by Autosport Media to raise funds for charity. The book is a collection of the driver’s “words of wisdom” written as Haiku, a traditional form of Japanese poetry, and the Mission Winnow logo appears prominently on the cover.[46]

British American Tobacco and McLaren

Screengrab of McLaren website, accessed April 2019

McLaren is the second most successful F1 team in the world after Ferrari, in terms of race wins,[30] and in 2017 was worth $640 million.[29] In the 1990s and early 2000s BAT owned an F1 team (Tyrell, relaunched as British American Racing in 1999) through which it primarily promoted its Lucky Strike cigarette brand.[3][47] The team was sold in 2006, around the time of the introduction of the FIA advertising ban, and BAT’s sponsorship of F1 appeared to have ended completely.[48]

However, in February 2019 McLaren announced a new sponsorship deal with BAT, launched as the “Better Tomorrow” campaign, under BAT’s “Transforming Tobacco” initiative.[49] This initiative promotes BAT’s e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products which BAT and McLaren portray as “potentially reduced risk”.[49][50]

When announcing the deal both companies emphasised their technology collaboration on “batteries, advanced materials and design”,[51] rather than BAT’s tobacco and nicotine products. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown went as far as to say that the partnership with BAT was “technology based with their newer generation products. We don’t have any relationship with the tobacco side of the business”.[52]

The “Better Tomorrow” branding first appeared on McLaren’s new cars at their launch in February 2019.[53] As with PMI’s “Mission Winnow” there was criticism of the BAT-McLaren deal in Australia.[54] One month later, shortly before the Australian Grand Prix, McLaren announced that it would be removing BAT’s “A Better Tomorrow” branding from its cars and drivers, with BAT stating that it was “mindful of the stance that the Australian government currently takes towards potentially reduced risk products”.[55]

At the end of March 2019, McLaren cars appeared at the Bahrain Grand Prix with branding for Vype, BAT’s e-cigarette.[56][57] The branding reappeared for the Azerbaijan race at the end of April. Neither included the "Better Tomorrow" branding.

Motorcycle Racing

The tobacco industry has also had a long association with motorcycle racing, although in 2018 sponsorship of the sport did not attract the same level of global media attention as F1.

PMI and Ducati

PMI has sponsored Dorna Sports S.L , which holds the global commercial rights for MotoGP, since 1992.[58] In November 2018 it was announced that the sponsorship agreement between the two companies had been extended until 2021.[59]

PMI has also been the title sponsor of the Ducati motorcycle team since 2003. In 2018 PMI’s promotional campaign “Mission Winnow” was publicly associated with Ducati,[60][61] and by 2019 “Mission Winnow” was listed next to PMI as the Ducati ‘Title Partner’.[62]
At the beginning of 2019 the Mission Winnow branding, on Ducati team motorcycles and riders’ uniforms, was revealed at an event at PMI’s Research and Development facility in Switzerland.[63]Miroslaw Zielinski, PMI’s President Science and Innovation, spoke about the sponsorship agreement and focussed, as with F1, on innovation and technology rather than tobacco:“…Ducati is one of the most inspiring and resilient brands in MotoGP, with a 70-year history in racing. The team’s determination to do better every race, to think unconventionally and to continuously push the boundaries of technology perfectly exemplify Mission Winnow.”[63]

Ducati’s first use of the “Mission Winnow” branding at the Qatar MotoGP, in March 2019, seemed to go unnoticed and unchallenged by the media or the sport’s governing body, the International Motorcycling Federation (FIM, Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme),[64] and appeared again at the second event of the season in Argentina.[65]

Imperial Tobacco’s Rizla

Rizla, manufacturer of cigarette papers and owned by Imperial Tobacco since 1997, has sponsored Suzuki MotorGP, the motorcycling racing team of Suzuki in the MotorGP World Championship, since 2006. In 2009 the sponsorship deal was extended for one year, reportedly for US$7 million,
[66] and in 2010 for a further two years.[67]

Since April 2016 Rizla has also sponsored the Yahama World Superbike Championship team.[68] and their logos appear prominently on the team website.[69]